13 Questions With Will Smith

What, if anything, did this story teach you about being a dad?

Will Smith: I guess what it taught me is interesting on camera and off, with Jaden, that the bottom line is time -- the amount of time you spend with your child. If it's [homeless] in a bathroom, if it's a million dollar home, it's the time. Jaden and I got to spend every single day, 10, 12 hours a day, together working on this film. And it became clear that whatever you have to offer financially doesn't matter. Whatever situation you're in, it doesn't matter. You have to be there. You have to be with your child. They're born with nothing, so they're used to having nothing. That's not new for them. Just the perfect amount of food to survive, that's what they had for the first nine months of their existence, so they're used to that. And to be able to spend that many hours a day together, our bond took off in a way that I never imagined.

How do you instill a work ethic in your children when they're growing up with success and wealth?

WS: We don't give 'em nothing [laughs]. … My daughter said, "Daddy, are we rich?" I say, "No, baby, you’re broke. Daddy worked really hard. You don't even own them clothes. Mommy and daddy are going to teach you how to create a space where you have the life that you desire, but this is the life that mommy and daddy desired and we worked really hard to create this life for ourselves, but you are going to have to create your own."

And they get it?

WS: No, not yet.

This is a film that many minorities or people from low incomes may relate to strongly. How do you relate to this kind of a struggle?

WS: I've been referring to a film called What the Bleep (Do We Know?); it's about quantum physics. You've heard the old phrase, if a tree falls in the forest, nobody's there, blah blah blah... The idea is that you have command over what your future, what your situation is. That you internally and with your spirit or however you want to put it -- the Tao or Muslim, Allah or Jesus -- whatever that universal force is that you connect to, you in sync with that force have command to will your future. And in What the Bleep? it talks about the idea that objects exist if you acknowledge they exist, and that was something that Chris and I seriously connected on.

In the film, there's no hint to any racism, and that was something specifically that Chris spoke about. He said, "Well, sure, there may have been racism, but the belief that if you acknowledge it, you give it power over you." And you call it arrogance, you call it naiveté, you call it whatever you want but I truly believe in a situation where you are hoping to create something, it is a much more powerful space to know that you will not be denied. Whatever's out there, you're running over it. So we're not even going to spend no time talking about the white man or they don't have no spots left in this college so I'm going to apply somewhere [else]. We're not acknowledging none of that. I'm going to that college, period. And I've always called it naiveté with me, that a few years ago I said that I honestly, truly believed that I could be the President of the United States. Now, there were probably political experts that laughed and all of that, but put me on a lie detector test right now and I absolutely, positively believe that I could be the President of the United States. I absolutely, positively believe I could fly the space shuttle. Period. And that's where it starts.

Chris Gardner laid down in a bathroom with his only child -- seemingly the ultimate parental failure. The next morning, he woke up, he bathed his son in the sink and he went to work. You can't do that if there's a possibility this might not work out. You can't do that. You have got to believe that it's already a done deal. It's just a matter of time before you get what you're designing. Barack Obama called it the audacity of hope. That's designed into the fiber of this country. This country's the only place that Chris Gardner could exist. I'm getting excited, but to me that is the essence of the power of this film.

Quick Fact

Will Smith first met his wife Jada Pinkett when she auditioned to play his girlfriend on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

When you first heard Chris's story, what moved you? And what are some of the things in his story that may not have made it into the movie?

WS: Well, I first got turned onto Chris Gardner from the 20/20 piece. When I saw that 20/20 piece, Chris Gardner walks through and retraces the steps. There is a segment where he goes into the actual bathroom that he slept in with his son, and I was like, "I'm making that movie." Then eventually I met with Chris. He was actually writing the book while we were shooting the movie. So he would be on the set three, four days a week and every week he'd give me 10 pages, just run me through some of the ideas. He was extremely helpful all through the process. We would do takes, and if something was not feeling right, I would go away with Chris for an hour, just have him talk me through it. Try to get me mentally into the space of the moment, what he connected to. He's extremely thoughtful. He's a lot like I felt like when I met Nelson Mandela. To have survived the things that he's survived and still have a big belly laugh, there's always going to be the scar tissue of traumatic experiences, but he's so peaceful walking through it. It was an extremely valuable resource to have him there and have him walking me through the scenes and taking me through San Francisco and Oakland.

When he watched the movie, I sat behind him when he watched the movie, which is the most gut-wrenching thing you could ever do is make a story about somebody's life and then sit in the theater with him while they're watching it. With Chris and with Ali, I'm not doing that anymore.

Why was it gut-wrenching?

WS: Someone trusted you with their life story. It's their family, it's their experiences and it's not like there's going to be a second shot at it. It's one time and you'll find that most people don't even want to put the stuff out. It's hard enough for them to even talk about it, let alone hand it to somebody to do what they want to do with it on the screen. So they have to love it. It's a complete failure if the movie makes hundreds of millions of dollars and awards and all of that, and Chris doesn't like it, it's a failure. And he turned around after the film and I'm sitting there and my heart is jumping and he looked and he said, "I can't even talk to you right now." And he got up and walked out and I was like, "Well, what the hell does that mean?" But then we really went outside and he was crying, and he just thanked me for the service to his family and he's forever indebted for bringing his story. And for me, it was a win from that point, so all of this is gravy time now.

What do you think of the whole Michael Richards thing, and guys like Jesse Jackson asking for a moratorium on the n-word?

WS: I directed an episode of All of Us -- the TV show Jada and I have on the CW -- I directed an episode where we went into the n-word. The little boy says it at his birthday party, and he actually says it to a white kid. He has no idea what it means -- he heard it and he said it. And the thing that is interesting and difficult is there is no answer. I'm an actor. I can take the words "I hate you" and I can make it mean I love you. So there's no argument to the fact that [I can say], "Boy, I hate you so much, come here. Oh, it's awful you did that to me, I hate you!"

The argument can be made that the words don't matter. But then on the other side, there's so much blood and hatred and pain connected to that word, even if that's true, why would you use it? So it's a very difficult situation that will take a whole lotta years for the black community to decide where we stand as a whole. And we probably never will decide where we stand as a whole on it. It could probably go from maybe 37 to maybe 40 percent of the rap records -- we could probably just pull it down a little bit.

As far as Michael Richards, he shouldn't be saying it one way or the other. Let black folks figure it out [laughs]. We don't need his help. We'll figure it out.

How is I Am Legend going?

WS: We're kind of breaking form a little bit. I'm interested to see how people react to it. We've designed something completely aggressive and new and different and we're sneaking a small art-film character drama into the middle of a big summer blockbuster, so we'll see how it works out.